samovar

Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

n. A metal urn with a spigot, used to boil water for tea and traditionally having a chimney and heated by coals.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

n. A metal urn with a spigot, for boiling water for making tea. Traditionally, the water is heated by hot coals or charcoal in a chimney-like tube which runs through the center of the urn. Today, it is more likely that the water is heated by an electric coil. It is a common misconception that tea is boiled in the samovar. This is not the case. The samovar merely boils the water, which is drawn off via the spigot into a separate teapot in which the tea is allowed to steep.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English

n. A metal urn used in Russia for making tea. It is filled with water, which is heated by charcoal placed in a pipe, with chimney attached, which passes through the urn.

from The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

n. A copper urn used in Russia, Siberia, Mongolia, and elsewhere, in which water is kept boiling for use when required for making tea, live charcoal being placed in a tube which passes up through the center of the urn. Similar vessels are used in winter in northern China, for keeping soups, etc., hot at table.

Examples

The samovar was most welcome, and in fact the samovar is the most essential thing in Russia, especially at times of particularly awful, sudden, and eccentric catastrophes and misfortunes; even the mother was induced to drink two cups — though, of course, only with much urging and almost compulsion.

Their route took them away from the Neva, where was the greatest crowd, and they soon reached the entrance of the pleasure-garden, climbed the great flight of wooden stairs to the pavilion on top, where Ivan hired a sled, and paid for a glass of tea hot from the big brass samovar, which is always boiling and ready for use.

I had to read this page about six times before I could detect what you all were talking about. I do love "Son of Samovar" though. And this word makes me think of hot, sweet, wonderful tea, no matter how it's used. :)

Rolig, +1 on the show of support, your conversation and contributions are valued and enjoyed.

This is all in fun, right? Wordie is the house the pedantry built :-) If you can't argue/discuss/dissect the nuances of a word here, where can you?

Whatever the meaning of "samovar" (and it's allowed to have more than one, I think, and slightly different ones in different places; that's how words work), part of the 30 Rock joke is indeed that Toufer is himself a pedant. (*shoots joke in head by pedantically explaining it*)

But I think I have a solution to this all. Samovars used for anything other than tea should be called Son of Samovars.

Jokes are fine, and I know that words change meanings as they migrate. I just hadn't realized samovar had turned into a generalized hot-beverage dispenser. Many borrowings, and samovar is one of them retain their foreignness. I may be out of it, but I find it hard to think of anything as a samovar, except facetiously, unless it is more or less directly associated with the Russian samovar. If there is humor for me in the excerpt John cited (and 30 Rock has not yet reached my Central European hideaway, so I am not familiar with any of the characters), then it is that Toufer himself doesn't know what a samovar is, though he smugly thinks he does. I suspect, however, that the intention was simply to show Toufer's nerdishness in using unusual words. In this case "samovar" actually means "a word only elitists or eggheads use." Which would be OK if the elitist/egghead used it correctly. But this is the kind of faux populism I hate about TV writing, because they usually get it wrong. The other day, for example, in some TV drama, someone who was supposed to be a born-again Christian said something like: "Jesus said" followed by a familar quotation from one of Paul's letters (e.g. "It is more blessed to give than to receive"). A born-again Christian would know this came from Paul and not from Jesus speaking in the Gospels. But the lazy-ass TV writers couldn't be bothered to look it up because they don't really care about accuracy or even about what born-again Christians would really say; they just want a snappy line.

Sorry for the digression. And thanks, Sionnach and Reesetee, for the vote of support.

I've seen a samovar of coffee, in Russia. It served coffee in the canteen at my language school in Karelia. It was less far less elegant than its tea counterpart and was labelled Coffee whereas the tea one was not, perhaps in line with the assumption of which rolig speaks.

Toufer: *Complaining to Liz* Surely our massive conglomerate parent company could spring for a samovar of coffee. Frank: Yeah, or, like, a big coffee dispenser! Toufer: *Condescendingly* That's what a samovar is. Frank: Are there other black nerds, or is it just you and Urkel? *Toofer just stares at Frank*